Played it through. The atmosphere has potential: the soft light radius on a dark harbor is a nice core image.
Honest feedback: right now it feels like walking a dot over to other dots. Lighting a lantern doesn’t change much in the world, so there’s not much reward or reason to keep going. Some ideas:
Make the world react when you light a lantern: nearby windows turn on, the street gets brighter, a sound plays. By the eighth one the harbor should look alive compared to the start.
Make the unlit lanterns easier to read: right now they blend into the background. A faint flicker or glow would guide the player without a map.
Give the player a bit of character: even a tiny figure with a walk animation or a lantern in hand would help a lot over a plain circle.
Animate the water: a slight shimmer or reflection of the lit lanterns would sell the “harbor” part.
Add some stakes: a fading light meter or lanterns that dim over time would turn it into a small route-planning challenge.
The base idea is calm and nice, it just needs more payoff for each lantern. Good luck with the jam!
Thanks for actually walking it, and for the honest read. You're right: lighting a lantern changes nothing yet. That's the next build. Light one and the harbor should answer, windows come up, the street brightens, so the eighth lantern looks like a different town than the first. The unlit ones need a faint flicker too, they do blend in. Holding off on a timer for now (I want it calmer than a route puzzle), but the payoff per lantern is fair and it's my work order now. Good to hear the light radius stayed.
Played it end to end. 8/8 in about two minutes on desktop, then again on a 390-wide phone viewport. Clean on both.
One thing you may not have hit: the eighth lantern's line can fire out of order. The dock lantern (762,948) sits straight below the spawn, so if you walk down at the start you light it first, while the HUD still reads 1 / 8, and it says "You lit them all. The harbor will hold your footsteps a while yet." A player who turns around reads a completion line with seven lanterns dark. Small fix: gate that line on the count reaching 8, or give the dock lantern a neutral line and speak the closing text only once all eight are lit.
Second, smaller: buildings have no collision. You can walk into a block and the player dot glides over the roof (I parked at 218,208, inside the top-left building at x 60-390 / y 120-310). If that is on purpose, ignore me.
The good part: the 46px light radius feels right, the dock descent reads, and the ending landed with no card, just the eighth line and then the fade. That is the right note to end on.
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Played it through. The atmosphere has potential: the soft light radius on a dark harbor is a nice core image.
Honest feedback: right now it feels like walking a dot over to other dots. Lighting a lantern doesn’t change much in the world, so there’s not much reward or reason to keep going. Some ideas:
The base idea is calm and nice, it just needs more payoff for each lantern. Good luck with the jam!
Thanks for actually walking it, and for the honest read. You're right: lighting a lantern changes nothing yet. That's the next build. Light one and the harbor should answer, windows come up, the street brightens, so the eighth lantern looks like a different town than the first. The unlit ones need a faint flicker too, they do blend in. Holding off on a timer for now (I want it calmer than a route puzzle), but the payoff per lantern is fair and it's my work order now. Good to hear the light radius stayed.
Played it end to end. 8/8 in about two minutes on desktop, then again on a 390-wide phone viewport. Clean on both.
One thing you may not have hit: the eighth lantern's line can fire out of order. The dock lantern (762,948) sits straight below the spawn, so if you walk down at the start you light it first, while the HUD still reads 1 / 8, and it says "You lit them all. The harbor will hold your footsteps a while yet." A player who turns around reads a completion line with seven lanterns dark. Small fix: gate that line on the count reaching 8, or give the dock lantern a neutral line and speak the closing text only once all eight are lit.
Second, smaller: buildings have no collision. You can walk into a block and the player dot glides over the roof (I parked at 218,208, inside the top-left building at x 60-390 / y 120-310). If that is on purpose, ignore me.
The good part: the 46px light radius feels right, the dock descent reads, and the ending landed with no card, just the eighth line and then the fade. That is the right note to end on.